Recipefiesta

Sick of relying on internet recommendations, I left my next destination to chance. Luckily, it led to me discovering a magical hamlet in the Cévennes mountains of south-central France

An unruly rabble bursts on to the street: a noisy eruption, bubbling towards us. This isn’t closing time on the Croisette in Cannes. A flock of sheep bustles past our cottage towards the shade of a huge chestnut tree, driven by three generations of herders and their dogs. The waterlike cacophony of their bells slows until only the odd tink tink punctuates the cicadas’ hum. The sheep graze, the shepherds doze off, and the mountain hamlet is still again.

My partner and I had set off by Eurostar less than 24 hours before, yet this place felt a world away from the ad agency where I work.

The first stage of an ambitious new hiking route that will link woodlands across Wales takes walkers into the wild hills above the valleys’ old mining villages

Bracken and heather ripple across the plateau. I exhale into the chill autumn air and my breath mists a view that reaches all the way to Gower and the ochre peaks of Bannau Brycheiniog (formerly the Brecon Beacons). Far below, the Ogmore valley’s terrace houses look like tiny constellations but up here on Tarren y Fforch, it’s just me and a few sheep taking springy steps between tufts of bilberries. If this corner of the south Wales valleys feels a long way from its coal mining past, that is, partly, the point.

I’m hiking the new Llwybr Coedwig Cymru Trail, or Wales Forest Trail. Running from Porthkerry Park, near Barry, to Pont Walby, close to Glynneath, this 50-mile (80km) pilot route is the first section of what the National Forest for Wales hopes will eventually be a trail linking woodlands across the length and breadth of Wales: a sylvan counterpart to the Wales Coast Path.

The landscape of rolling hills and chalk valleys that inspired Tennyson is the perfect setting for an autumnal short break. Here’s where to eat, where to stay and what not to miss

Wide skies, gentle footpaths through gold and copper wooded hills, thatched cottages, cosy pubs and quirky shops: the Lincolnshire Wolds have all the ingredients for the perfect autumnal mini break. Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson lived in the village of Somersby for most of his first three decades and the local landscapes echo through his verses. In The Lady of Shalott: “Long fields of barley and of rye / That clothe the wold and meet the sky …”

The Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape covers an area of 216 sq miles. On its southern boundary, halfway between Lincoln and the coast, the friendly market town of Horncastle bills itself as the “gateway to the Wolds”. With handsome brick houses, great cafes, a market on Thursdays and Saturdays and decent public transport links, it’s a perfect base for exploring the area.

If you’re looking for a last blast of summer, these sunny resorts offer quiet beaches but enough life to stave off the end-of-season blues

A Kalkan sunset is always a beautiful thing – the horseshoe-shaped bay deepening to azure blue against an apricot-rose sky – but, in October, when the light is low and the sun drops early, it’s almost transcendentally lovely. In some Turkish resorts, you’d be sitting watching it surrounded by quiet streets, half-empty bars and that melancholic sense that another season is over. In Kalkan, it still feels like summer; the harbourfront restaurants throng with visitors, the day gulets (wooden boats) still putter in and out of the bay and you don’t have to wait an hour to get a taxi back to your villa.

An out-of-season journey through the peninsula reveals Byzantine villages, deserted beaches and friendly tavernas

As I drove across the causeway which links the tiny fortress island of Monemvasia to the south-eastern coast of the Peloponnese, the Aegean sparkling on all sides, I recalled a line by Yiannis Ritsos, one of Greece’s greatest 20th-century poets. Ritsos lived in Monemvasia, in a house that is today a museum on a cobble-stretch by the tawny castle walls. A favourite passage goes: “The voyage is neither a leave-taking nor a home-coming – an ethereal bridge …”

The excuse for my trip to the Peloponnese’s deep south – Messinia, the Mani, and Laconia – fell between those two ideas. My mother has roots in the Peloponnese – a sort-of homecoming that I’ve long wanted to explore – and with the summer over and greedy for an adventure to myself, I set out by car, leaving Kalamata, the leafy port city and gateway to the area, on a coastal road circuit.

As a new film about Sherpa Tenzing Norgay is released, we visit Pen-Y-Gwryd, the Snowdonia hotel which served as British ‘base camp’ for the 1953 expedition and where the spirit of adventure lives on

In the early hours of 2 June 1953, guests at the Pen-Y-Gwryd hotel in the heart of Eryri (Snowdonia) were woken from their sleep by the sound of footsteps running down the corridor outside their rooms. The commotion was followed by gleeful shouting and the sound of champagne corks popping. A late-night telephone call to the hotel’s owner had moments earlier confirmed that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had successfully summited Mount Everest. It had taken two days for the news to travel from the Himalayas to London. Serendipitously, news of the historic achievement coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II later that day.

In the days and weeks that followed, the two mountaineers were feted across the front pages of newspapers around the world. Posing awkwardly for the cameras, their beaming smiles shone out of frost-burnt faces. In the decades that followed, Tenzing Norgay’s role in the expedition was increasingly marginalised – he was a Sherpa, indigenous to the area, and the load-carrying guide, while Hillary firmly planted his ice axe in the history books.

From ancient forests to spas, medieval cities and the birthplace of Bauhaus, Thuringia packs a punch for a car-free autumn break

It’s early morning in Erfurt, the capital of Germany’s Thuringia region, and Domplatz is abuzz with local growers setting out crates of vegetables and flowers beneath the soaring medieval cathedral towers. This 14th- and 15th-century engineering wonder holds the Gloriosa, the world’s largest medieval free-swinging bell, cast in 1497 and weighing 12 tonnes. Though the city and surrounding landscape are notably flat, its skyline is pierced by soaring church towers and steeples, the atmospheric old town hardly changed over the centuries.

Thuringia – often called the “green heart of Germany” – lies in the centre of the country, between Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria. It’s famous for its dense forests, intellectual heritage and hearty cuisine, and I’m here for four days to explore using public transport.

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing

Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water. Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages, each as pretty as the terraced villas of Lake Como and Garda, but with far fewer visitors. I arrive at the small port town of Peschiera Maraglio – where striped wooden boats jut from the water like the gondolas of Venice – on a ferry from Sulzano, a five-minute hop across the water.

“Only three people on the island are allowed to own a car: the priest, the doctor and the mayor,” says Chiara, my tour guide from Brescia. Residents can zip up and down the steep island roads on mopeds, and a small fleet of van-sized buses trundle around throughout the day, but nearly all cars are forbidden and visitors have to explore on foot or bike.

From Alpine valleys to belle époque towns, dip your toes in the therapeutic waters and steaming mineral pools at spa hotels offering centuries-old healing treatments

In 2021, Unesco designated 11 historic spa towns across Europe as one transnational world heritage site, recognising their “exceptional testimony to the European spa phenomenon, which gained its highest expression from around 1700 until the 1930s”. This was the original wellness tourism, and these grand health resorts include Bath in England and the town of Spa in Belgium, as well as the west Bohemia spa triangle of Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně and Mariánské Lázně.

An autumn break in the French mountain town of Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains offers thermal treatments and glorious walking trails before the winter ski crowds descend

Mont Blanc is hiding behind the clouds, but the Aiguille du Midi spears the sky above a mountainside ablaze with russet, gold and tawny tones. The maples flare red; rowan trees are dusted with crimson berries.

Our little group has trundled up to Mont Lachat station (altitude: 2,115 metres) on the Tramway du Mont Blanc, the century-old cog railway that climbs improbably steep slopes from the French alpine town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains. Operational since 1909, the railway was once intended to reach the 4,809-metre summit of Mont Blanc, but war, glacial terrain and waning funds put an end to that ambition. But even from Mont Lachat, the view is a showstopper. On one side, the Bionnassay Glacier slips scenically down the slope, a buzzard soaring over the milky-green glacial lake at its base, while on the other the Chamonix valley basks in soft autumnal sunshine.

The lost practice of hitchhiking is a subculture, an art, and a way of travel that satisfies wanderlust like no other trip. Plus, it costs nothing

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I’m alone, hunched over by a dusty road junction, and feeling the bite of the morning sun. I’ve already been waiting here, on the outskirts of Esperance on the south coast of Western Australia, for more than three hours. Another wave of traffic approaches. I smile, stretch out my arm and raise my thumb.

Most drivers who pass wave or give me a thumbs up. One gives me the finger. There isn’t much traffic. Someone tosses a water bottle out their window at me.

After electronics giant Philips left, the city reinvented itself as a multicultural hub for creativity and innovation, and the home of Dutch Design Week

A baggily clad skateboarder’s wheels clatter across concrete floors, the noise bouncing off exposed pipes and iron girders. Vaulted skylights set in high ceilings illuminate the industrial space and its central kitchen, from which my main course – a silky lemon risotto, spiked with samphire, rhubarb, garlic, baby onions and basil – has just been transported.

I’m in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, in North Brabant, famous for its historic connection to Philips, the one-time electronics giant. The restaurant, Radio Royaal, is housed in what was once their engine room, in the Strijp-S neighbourhood. Today, Strijp-S buzzes with concept stores, an indoor food market, MU Hybrid Art House and the Area 51 skatepark. The broader area, Strijp, was where the company was largely headquartered: its zones are named S, T and R. In the late 90s, Philips withdrew from the city where it had started in 1891, and the letters I, J and P were never assigned.

Wildfires raged through the national park this summer, but much of the landscape remains untouched – and autumn is the perfect time to go

In the Cairngorms national park, the bracken is changing from dark green to russet and umber. Birch leaves are lined with gold, while the Scots pines remain proudly green. Autumn is arriving with a little sigh of relief here, after a summer few will forget.

The wildfire that began near Glenmore and Abernethy on 15 July burned more than 33 sq km (13 sq miles) of moorland and forest. More than 500 firefighters were involved; homes and businesses were evacuated; and the emergency response lasted over a month. Visiting now, it’s hard to see, or even imagine, the damage. Much of the burned area is high on the hill and far from the roads. It’s a huge loss but, in a national park stretching 4,528 sq km (1,748 sq miles), surprisingly easy to miss.

A new series of rambles cuts the 185-mile trail into bitesize portions reachable by train, with urban beavers, the Devil’s Chair tor and some delicious food along the way

Few pubs boast a more idyllic setting. As I emerge from the woods after a 15-mile hike, The Bridges, on the banks of the Onny River, in the rolling south Shropshire hills, glistens in the late afternoon sun. Inside it’s all wooden beams, with light streaming through stained glass and huge bunches of homegrown flowers adding splashes of colour. There’s time for a pint before general manager Sam Thompson shows me to my room in the recently converted stables.

I’m here exploring part of the 185-mile (297km) Shropshire Way, on a two-day Heart of the Hills hike – one of the county tourist board’s new Rail-Ready Short Breaks. Designed for people who don’t have time to tackle the whole route, the itineraries focus on loops that are easy to access by train, with illustrated PDF downloads, GPX files, accommodation suggestions and highlights of what to do along the way. My route will take me from Shrewsbury to Bishop’s Castle via Ratlinghope – about 27 miles, perfect for a weekend.

The classic pre-dinner drink and snack combo varies depending where you are in Italy. In this fair city, it’s an institution that can even be enjoyed first thing

I arrived in Verona, I admit, without a particularly clear idea of what aperitivo meant. In Italy, the ritual – broadly, a drink and something small to eat before a meal – speaks a different dialect in every city.

Milan has turned it into a polished after-work institution. In Venice, it is more itinerant: an ombra (a small glass of wine) along with a cicchetto (a bite-size snack) and then on to the next bacaro (one of the city’s traditional wine bars). Verona follows another logic.

A world away from the tourist hotspots of the coast, Extremadura and Castile and León offer unpolluted skies, lower prices – and hope for the future of vulnerable wildlife

As photographed at night from a satellite, or the International Space Station (ISS), the Iberian peninsula looks encrusted with lights along its coastal edges. Madrid forms a big pulsing cluster near the centre, while surrounding hinterlands appear as something of a void. Ever fewer people live out in Castile and León and Extremadura, adjoining regions that cover much of what is known as La España Vacía, or “Empty Spain”.

Not many visit either, or at least not compared with Barcelona and other glowing nodes of the tourist circuit. So, while the big ports and resorts struggle to manage surplus holidaymakers, there is room for plenty more out west, toward the Portuguese border. Some have been following the stars that way lately, under the auspices of an astrotourism initiative called Extremadura Buenas Noches.

A new direct train service connects the far south of Sweden to the Norwegian capital in just over six hours, with the option of stopping off in the seaside town of Varberg or lively Gothenburg en route

‘This carriage is due for modernisation. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience 90s Germany style,” reads the sign on the door to the dining carriage. The couple inside aren’t missing theirs: they’re taking endless selfies in the clinical pink-and-turquoise carriage that looks like a hospital canteen and smells like cinnamon buns and strong filter coffee.

I’m on Snälltåget’s iconic red-shelled train, on the Swedish rail company’s new route from Malmö to Oslo – a 6.5-hour journey along Sweden’s picturesque western corridor. Until now, the journey between the two cities involved long bus rides and fragmented train transfers. This direct line is easier and cheaper, with tickets starting at £11 each way. It’s already a hit, shuttling more than 25,000 passengers since launching this summer.

‘Kölsch is not a drink, it is a religion’ in Cologne, and it’s only brewed in and around the German city. But which of the many beautiful, storied beer halls serves up the best?

There’s a saying in Cologne, repeated with the mild smugness of people who know they’re right: kölsch is the only culture you can drink. It sounds like a line lifted straight from the tourist board’s brochure. Then you spend a day working your way around the city’s traditional brewhouses and realise it’s a statement of fact.

Since 1997, kölsch has held a protected geographical indication within the EU, guaranteeing that any beer bearing the name is brewed within 50km of the city and made strictly to the Kölsch-Konvention. That agreement, signed in 1986, defined the style as “a light, highly attenuated, hop-accentuated, clear, top-fermenting ‘vollbier’ [full-beer]”, restricting production exclusively to the local area. It is, in effect, the champagne of pale ales: locally adored and tied to a city that has always insisted on doing things its own way.

Get inspiration for your next short break with our pick of self-catering accommodation, from a sleek Highlands retreat to a cabin with a hot tub on a Somerset vineyard

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I brought my children to Penang to immerse them in the places of their grandparents’ stories. When I stopped lecturing them about gratitude and privilege, we enjoyed our final days doing as locals do

As I stepped out of Penang international airport, the humidity hit me like I was peering into a just-opened rice cooker. The air carried whiffs of exhaust fumes, fried food and something earthy. It felt thrilling and familiar because I was born in Penang and lived there for six years before I moved to Australia. I looked back at my three children who were visiting for the first time. They were draped over their suitcases like wilted lettuce. “Welcome to Penang,” I said, wiping sweat off my brow.

It was July 2026. It had been 13 years since I last visited Penang, when my father had hosted a lavish wedding dinner featuring a champagne fountain and swan-shaped ice sculpture for me and my new husband. For my white, Australian husband, it was a trip of firsts: his first Chinese tea ceremony; his first 10-course banquet; the first time he met my extended family. But for me, it had been the last time I’d spoken Mandarin and the last time I had seen my grandmother before she died.

From a cosy Cornish inn with open fires to a boutique hotel in Northumberland, these new and revamped boltholes tick all the right boxes

With autumn officially here, our readers savour days of fruitful mellowness, from Cornwall to Loch Lomond

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I love Loch Lomond in autumn. I’d start with a walk around Balmaha village and a stretch of the West Highland Way, pretending I’m there for the scenery rather than earning the right to eat something massive afterwards. Autumn is when it looks best: orange hills, cold air, dramatic clouds and the constant Scottish gamble of whether you’ll get sunshine, sideways rain, or both within 10 minutes. I finish, if I’m not driving, with a wee dram to properly round things off.
Pete

Under the Finnish capital lies a world of swimming pools, go-karting tracks, playgrounds – and even an art gallery

The moon is an impostor. Swimming backstroke beneath its surface, I look up at craggy hollows in close relief. White rock undulates in all directions, a forest of peaks rising next to a desert of craters. Every time I trick myself into thinking I’m somewhere celestial, the sound of children splashing brings me back to earth.

This is no lunar landscape but Helsinki’s underground swimming hall, excavated from granite bedrock and officially opened in 1993. These days, Itäkeskus uimahalli is one of the Finnish capital’s most visited leisure facilities, welcoming 400,000 people a year. Local people mingle with tourists, I will discover, during a week exploring Helsinki’s subterranean metropolis.

The Tweed region is easily as beautiful as nearby Byron, but without the glamour and crowds. For locals, the biggest drawcard is the community

Locals in the Tweed region already knew we were a bit special, obviously. The sheer beauty of the place routinely stops you in your tracks. It turns out we are also having a moment on the world stage. Along with the Red Centre in the Northern Territory, the Tweed is one of only two Australian destinations named in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2027, the travel publication’s annual list of 50 standout holiday spots and experiences, announced on Wednesday.

Now those who came here to escape the world may find it is coming to them.

A long-distance walking route in the south of France devised by the celebrated land artist offers intrepid hikers an opportunity to immerse themselves in nature and art

At 69, I had never hiked with a backpack and I had no idea what land art was. Nonetheless, when my friend Jackie, a nature documentary film-maker, invited me to join her and her friends Wendy and Sasha on a hiking trip to Refuges d’Art in the mountainous countryside of Haute-Provence, I said a resounding “yes”. We would be sleeping alongside sculptures by the renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy.

First, I watch Rivers and Tides, a documentary on Goldsworthy’s work, and discover he has built exquisite ice sculptures and stone cairns in my own country, Canada. His work seems to speak to an older part of the soul. Then, I start walking up hills, gradually adding weights to my backpack until I can comfortably carry 9kg (20lb).

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay

‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all.

Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of the Schutzhütte Oisternig enjoyed their cold beers regardless of which country they were in. While official boundaries may have changed in these parts over the centuries, the magnificence of the mountains has not.

Beautifully situated refuges with superlative views offering sanctuary to intrepid hikers and climbers

A good mountain hut, I reckon, should be small and only accessible on foot after considerable effort. Throw in a bit of historical interest and I’m bound to be happy. In which case, Cabaña Verónica in the Picos de Europa is a fine start to this list. It sleeps six, and at 2,325 metres requires a two-hour trek from the nearest cable car station, never mind road. It has incredible views and a friendly custodian who keeps things in good order. Yet the real attraction is that this place was formerly a gun turret of a US navy battleship that was scrapped in Bilbao in 1960. An enterprising engineer, Conrado Senties, had it carried up on horseback and reassembled on a plug of rock in the middle of nowhere. Don’t ask why, just enjoy the eccentricity.
€15, reservarefugios.com

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine

‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.

I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”

Weekenders from Zagreb head to the rolling green Samobor Hills for nature, vineyards, delicious local food and Habsburg-era architecture

‘You’re going to Samobor? You must try kremšnita,” my Dubrovnik friends told me before I set off on my trip north. “But I’ve already had kremšnita in Zagreb,” I told them. They do it better in Samobor, they insisted. I wasn’t about to get embroiled in a battle of the cream cakes in a region where Croatians, Slovenes and Austrians all like to celebrate their own versions of this decadently thick, fat custard slice topped with puff pastry and icing sugar. But I was more than willing – happy, even – to follow everyone’s suggestions to try kremšnita in Hotel Livadić’s Kavana Livadić, in Samobor’s main King Tomislav Square, a mere half-hour drive west of Zagreb.

It lived up to the hype – delicately rich, creamy and with a light touch. After spending a few weeks in sun-bleached Venetian Dalmatia, amid the scrubby, limestone Dinaric Alps, I had swapped empires and was firmly in Habsburg Croatia. Here, in Zagreb County’s prettiest town, handsome baroque houses in pastel shades of buttery yellow, apricot and pistachio, festooned with stucco, line narrow King Tomislav Square, whose umbrella-shaded cafe terraces were filled with Croatians getting their morning fix of coffee and chatter.

Hiking alone in the countryside can be joyous, but for women it can sometimes feel unnerving. Here’s how to enjoy it safely, plus four stunning routes to walk solo

I did my first solo hike during a sunny September, seven years ago. After a summer of feeding and ferrying four noisy teenagers (and their friends) around, I was exhausted. But despite being bone tired, I had barely moved. I yearned, above all, for time on my own, for the chance to walk without interruption (and at the pace I chose), and for the silence of some empty wilderness.

But I was nervous. Not of being on my own, but of what might happen to me with no one around to help (breaking a bone, encountering a psychopath, being chased by a bull, getting fatally lost). I could have found a companion or joined a group, but my need for silence and solitude outweighed my fears.

It’s the birthplace of the popular cheese, but the Barletta-Andria-Trani province in southern Italy has an array of local delicacies – from olive oil and yellow tomatoes to goat prosciutto

‘I don’t eat mozzarella outside Puglia,” says our friend Savio. “It’s not the same.” Savio is a very opinionated foodie, so I take his words with a pinch of good Puglian sea salt (see below). He was adamant about the superiority of the stretched-curd cheese from his home turf.

Puglia is also the birthplace of ingredient du jour burrata, which originated in Andria, a few miles from Savio’s home town of Barletta. Andria forms one part of the triangular Barletta-Andria-Trani (BAT) province, often passed over for better-known parts of Puglia, despite the cheese connection and Barletta having miles of palm-backed, sandy beaches.

Chefs in the east of the country are shunning imported produce for local ingredients, reinforcing how food is intertwined with a region and its people

‘It’s a magical place, and not just because of the hotel.” Standing outside the greenhouses at Högbo Brukshotell, two hours north of Stockholm, Stefan Johansson is talking about far more than hospitality. The former head chef, now responsible for sustainability at Högbo, has spent much of the past decade helping reshape the way this corner of Sweden grows, cooks and thinks about food.

The catalyst was disarmingly simple. Years ago, a journalist asked Johansson why he was cooking the food he was cooking. Like many ambitious Swedish chefs, Stefan trained in Stockholm’s top restaurants, where ingredients from around the world were only a phone call away. The question lingered long after the interview ended.

French champagne house Taittinger is helping produce a premium fizz in the Garden of England – and now visitors can visit the beautiful winery and sample it

The grapes are turning purple on tall green vines, which stretch down towards the distant flint-and-limestone tower of Chilham church. These rows of Pinot Meunier, destined for English sparkling wine, are 51% owned by French champagne house Taittinger. “England is now the most exciting wine region,” says host and sales executive Hilary Sharp as she leads me around Domaine Evremond vineyard, which opened its visitor centre last year to coincide with the launch of its first wine.

In his 2023 book Vines in a Cold Climate, drinks writer Henry Jeffreys charts the rise of English wine “from a joke to world-class in 30 years”. The book opens with an alcohol-fuelled scene of vine-planting at Domaine Evremond in May 2017: unseasonably cold, rainy, muddy, with rambling anecdotes from anglophile Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger about “English women encountered in his misspent youth”. The vineyard is named for the exiled French aristocrat Charles de Saint-Évremond, a symbol of hedonistic Anglo-French cooperation. The bon vivant introduced champagne to England and party-loving Charles II made him governor of Duck Island in St James’s Park.

Your top culinary discoveries, from Bled cake in Slovenia to sardines in Portugal and seafood soup in Spain

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Last August, the smoky aroma of grilled sardines drifting over the beach in Portimão woke me up from my sunbathing on the beach. Attracted by the aroma of barbecued fish, we found ourselves in the old port where, for €12, I was served two delicious sandwiches on rustic bread of sardines in garlic and olive oil, with a small cold beer. I sat down, ate and chatted with locals on benches at simple communal tables. The important thing seemed to be to enjoy food together. The next morning, a reenactment of the fishing boats arriving loaded with fish, as they once were, was a real spectacle – complete with guitar playing, drum-banging and excited seagulls whirling and wailing above in the hope of a feast. Later, concerts and dancing animated the town as the party for the sardine festival went on well into the night. Cooking demos and dishes including sardine-based soup and salads, added to the enjoyment. I never imagined such pleasure could be had from the simple sardine.
Joe

Repurposed railway lines make accessible and family-friendly walking and cycling routes. Here are some of the best, from Somerset to the Highlands of Scotland

Start/finish Coombs Road in Bakewell to Blackwell Mill in Chee Dale, but there are lots of access points along the way
Distance 8.5 miles
Cycle, hike or ride a horse along the Monsal Trail to explore a swathe of Derbyshire’s industrial history. This former stretch of the Midland Railway line winds past the imposing structures of two 18th-century cotton mills, through illuminated railway tunnels and over the Headstone Viaduct, which gives glorious views of the River Wye and Monsal Dale below. Interpretation and listening panels along the route explain the area’s history, geology and wildlife, while a short detour on to Monsal Head offers a panoramic view of the viaduct itself. Pause here for lunch or a pint at the Monsal, or stop in at Hassop Station Cafe, which offers bike rental alongside hefty sandwiches, homemade cakes and wood-fired pizza at weekends.
monsaltrail.org.uk

A remote 18th-century chapel deep in Sami lands is the goal of the Präststigen, a 37-mile trail that traverses some of the country’s most spectacular scenery

I wasn’t exactly in “Sunday best”, but I had made some effort. Well, I’d changed my underwear for the first time in a couple of days and given myself a baby-wipe bath. Still, as we filed into the chapel at Alkavare, I felt more a member of an expedition than a congregation. We sat on the low wooden benches, waterproof jackets rustling and leather walking boots stamping on the flagstone floor to keep warm. Fortunately, the priest, Mogens Amstrup Jacobsen, appeared to be a “man of the Gore-Tex”, as well as a man of the cloth, as he unzipped his own black rain jacket to reveal his dog collar. As the service began, the Arctic wind whipped through cracks in the dry stone walls, insulated only with reindeer hair, and candles flickered in their brass sconces.

I had hiked to Alkavare following the Präststigen, or “Priests’ trail”, a 37-mile (60km) route from Kvikkjokk that could stake a claim as Europe’s wildest pilgrimage route, and certainly one of its most beautiful. The Präststigen follows the path that priests would once have taken to the chapel, built in 1788, to perform a service each summer, and today, on the last weekend in July, intrepid hikers and perseverant pilgrims can attend that same service.

Conservationists have helped Cantabrian brown bears claw their way back from the edge of extinction in the beautiful mountains of Asturias – and carefully controlled nature tourism allows visitors to see them

Once upon a time, in the woods outside Pola de Somiedo, lived a family of Cantabrian brown bears. The villagers reported sightings of a mother bear who had lost a leg to a hunter’s trap, her two cubs and two adult males, either of which might have been the father. In those days, at the end of the 1980s, they seemed to be the last of their kind in this part of Asturias. Meanwhile, the wider population dropped to about 60 bears across the surrounding Cantabrian mountain range that gave the species its name.

They have since clawed their way back from the edge of extinction here in northern Spain, and nature guide Luis Frechilla believes their numbers may now be upwards of 500 again. “They’re still classed as endangered,” he tells me, until the official count hits 1,000. But relative abundance makes them much easier to see today in Somiedo natural park – one of Spain’s first such protected areas, established in 1988.

On a self-drive break in search of Lake Saimaa’s autumn colours, we encountered blue skies, cosy lakeside cabins and saunas, great food – and lots of stubbornly green trees

I wasn’t sure what to expect from an autumn trip to Finland, my first ever to the country, but spending an afternoon sprawled on a deck chair beneath blazing blue skies certainly wasn’t part of it. After a morning walking beneath the leafy canopy at the Mustila Arboretum – the oldest, most extensive botanical garden in the country – and a lunchtime wine-tasting (more of which later), my friend Sara and I pitched up at the Sahanlahti resort, deep in the Finnish Lakeland, only to find sun-drenched scenery that felt far more Mediterranean than Nordic.

Sahanlahti was the second stop on a mid-September road trip from Helsinki to the shores of Lake Saimaa; a journey in search of ruska, the spectacular autumn colours that blaze for a few short weeks before the long Finnish winter sets in. However, on our opening drive east from the airport to the Radalla resort, set on Lake Urajärvi, most of the thousands of trees we drove past were resolutely green, with just the very tips of the leaves tinged with auburn, like a foliage balayage.

From the Renaissance treasures of Parma to offbeat creativity in Nantes, these cities offer world-class art, great food and a laid-back alternative to Europe’s hotspots

As dilemmas go, it’s an unusual one: saddle up a giant squid or board a submersible for a voyage to the bottom of the ocean. In the end, I find myself drawn to a fierce-looking merhorse and tentatively take the reins. High above, my daughter glides by on a flying fish, metallic fins flapping, while her Dad is battling stormy seas at the helm of a huge conch shell. A ride on the Carrousel des Mondes Marins (marine worlds carousel) – a three-storey steampunk merry-go-round inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – is one of the highlights of a visit to Nantes. A surreal fairground ride, a work of art and a homage to the city’s most famous son. It’s also a lot of fun.

The imposing red-brick mills of its industrial past are a stunning example of urban regeneration in the former ‘city of a thousand chimneys’

Sometimes travel delivers a real shock. I’m moving along the boulevards in the Polish city of Łódź, enjoying the excellent cafes and warm sunshine, when I spot the vans. They are parked up on the verge, with racks of clothing and heavily laden tables behind. I can’t resist a Sunday morning market and walk towards a group of men huddled around a car that is covered in blankets. And then it happens. They turn – and I see they are weighing pistols in their hands. I recognise the lean profile of a German Luger, and then the bulkier Colt 45.

There is a second of doubt. I hesitate. They replace the weapons on the display and walk away laughing. I approach. On the car roof is a row of dusty soldiers’ helmets. “We were repairing a pavement in the centre of town,” says the seller cheerfully, handing me a badge to inspect. “Imagine! For 80 years, all this stuff was just under our feet.”

You share your low-key alternatives to overcrowded hotspots, from an island city in the Med to a Norwegian art nouveau gem
• Tell us about your trips in Europe’s mountains – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher

Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna won me over precisely because it feels like Italy with the volume turned down. I stayed in a small family-run hotel near Via delle Volte, where mornings began with quiet cobbled streets and the smell of fresh pastries. The Palazzo dei Diamanti was almost empty when I visited, giving me space to enjoy its Renaissance art without crowds. Evenings meant cycling past terracotta walls to tiny trattorias serving pumpkin cappellacci, a traditional pasta dish. It’s a city that lets you slow down, breathe and enjoy its beauty.
John

A fragment of temperate rainforest lies on the edge of Dartmoor, and following years of conservation work, its owners have now opened up a sustainable campsite next to this fragile ecosystem

Mist blankets the valley as I wheel my camping gear down the small hill towards a clearing ringed by trees and shrubs. A picnic bench sits at its edge, angled towards the reason why I’m here: one of the last remaining fragments of temperate rainforest in Britain. I’m pitching my tent at Wray Valley Camping, a low-impact site on Dartmoor’s eastern edge between Lustleigh and Moretonhampstead, where I’ll spend five days on one of the site’s “nearly wild” pitches.

Also known as Atlantic woodland, temperate rainforests depend on a rare combination of high humidity, rainfall and consistently mild coastal temperatures where the sea moderates the climate. They once stretched from the western Highlands of Scotland down to Cornwall, covering 20% of the UK, and sheltering rare and delicate lichens and plants. Today more than 95% of our temperate rainforest cover is gone, but Devon’s near-constant dampness and its exposure to the Atlantic make it one of the last strongholds for this rare habitat.

Distilleries are the backbone of Islay’s economy and tourist trade. Thanks to their success, other businesses – from breweries and farms to restaurants and chocolatiers – are now thriving and adding to the island’s appeal

The Paps of Jura disappear into the mist as I pedal along the shores of Loch Indaal, and the rain cloud I’ve been racing finally catches up. I stash my hire bike at Port Charlotte youth hostel, quickly change and make it to Lochindaal Seafood Kitchen just before the downpour.

I’m soon warmed, by the welcome then by a bowl of creamy fish chowder. “We’ve plenty of fresh seafood just in,” is all the temptation I need to order the seafood plate. It’s a bowl for one, but a hungry one, and soon I’m picking and cracking my way through piles of fat langoustines and crab claws, with hot whisky-butter scallops and plenty of bread and butter.

The famous pueblos blancos in southern Spain’s Sierra de Grazalema natural park teem with wildlife amid a limestone wonderland of peaks

‘The wind is in from Africa / Last night I couldn’t sleep.” Joni Mitchell has ear-wormed her way into my head as my wife and I step out from Zahara de la Sierra into the mountains of Sierra de Grazalema natural park. The Africa bit probably comes from yesterday’s visit to Zahara’s castle museum. Here, high above the tiled terracotta mosaic of village rooftops, we learned how the recapture of this picturesque hill town was a turning point in the Reconquista – the military campaign of the 1400s that saw the Catholics retake southern Spain after seven centuries of Moorish control. As for sleep deprivation, I may just have overdone it on last night’s tapas.

Either way, Africa feels present as we tramp through the countryside of Andalucía, if only in the wildlife. The painted lady butterflies drifting over the flower-spangled verges, the turtle doves purring from the olive groves and the booted eagle drifting overhead: all are summer visitors recently blown in from the great continent to our south.

Pierogi are a religion in Poland, but I’d never been a believer. Could a recce in the charming Baltic city convert me?

I used to live in Poland. I worked in a fish-and-chip shop in the western city of Poznań, boning cod and peeling potatoes for £1.50 an hour. With the exception of that job, I enjoyed everything about my time in the country, not least the food. I liked the chicken broth with noodles, the slippery herring, the knuckles of pork the size of basketballs, the cold beetroot soup that beats gazpacho hands down.

One thing I was less delighted by were Polish dumplings – pierogi. It wasn’t that they weren’t nice – they were – it was more that they didn’t seem to warrant the extreme levels of affection and esteem Poles often bestow on the doughy parcels. By being ambivalent about them, I was going against a well-established grain.

Want to avoid the crowds in Florence and Siena? Escape to these islands, from lively Elba to tiny, car-free Giannutri

Scattered between the Tuscan coast and Corsica, the seven islands of the Tuscan archipelago offer a striking contrast to mainland Tuscany. All are part of a protected national park, but each has its own character – some are lively, others tiny and sparsely inhabited. Montecristo and Gorgona are only accessible via strictly limited guided tours, but here’s a brief guide to the highlights of the other five.

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Tourism is only just taking hold in Vipava, but the locals are determined to do it right, by putting community first and preserving what makes it special

The drive to Pedrovo is vertiginous, and each hairpin bend has me sending a silent prayer that we won’t meet a tractor coming the other way. When we near it, we abandon the car and continue on foot to the hamlet, a scattering of red-roofed, whitewashed houses high on the steep karst hillside. The air is warm and dry, scented with wild sage.

We follow a hand-painted sign to Čilčevi Farmstead. Descending stone steps to a lush garden, we find a shaded table set with fresh cheeses produced at the farm’s own dairy. Below, the valley stretches in both directions, a wide flat plain hemmed in by steep mountain slopes, with the Vipava River winding lazily through fields and vineyards.

From secluded coves in Ireland to an evening passeggiata on Italy’s Aeolian islands, readers share their discoveries
• Tell us about your most memorable food and drink discoveries in Europe

Giant griffon vultures glided parallel with my bus as it reached the highest point of Cres, the least populated of the four main islands in the Kvarner Gulf at the very north of the Croatian Adriatic. Covered in scrubby heath, olive groves and lavender, with small towns and villages on its coastline, its wildness is its appeal. Some, like Cres town, are unobtrusively set up for holidaymakers; in others local people just quietly get on with the life they’ve lived since the Venetians ruled here. All are lapped by the turquoise, crystal seas Croatia is known for.
Rhiannon

Built in the 60s and 70s to curb a holiday exodus to Spain, with apartments inspired by Mayan pyramids and featuring ‘intergalactic curves’, La Grande-Motte is having another moment in the sun with fans of modern architecture

My dream holiday is a trip back in time. Not to see the results of seismic Pompeii or 15th-century Machu Picchu – although I love both – but somewhere created specifically between the mid 1950s and 1970s, when cities were getting weird. I love postwar architourism, exploring urban planning at its most frenzied and optimistic. I have relished trips to Niemeyer’s Brasília and Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh in India, where the monumental and visionary modernist architecture and interiors are at odds with the minimal population. So La Grande-Motte, the retro futurist folly of a resort town on the southern coast of France, a 30-minute drive from Montpellier, had long been on my “must visit” list.

The tourist board of this Occitanie seaside town likes to flag up some superficial parallels between it and the aforementioned cities, but this isn’t a high-concept capital city or administrative hub. It was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s purely to persuade the French to stop going south to the Costa Brava in Spain. As part of an initiative by the French government, a stretch of windswept mosquito-infested coast between Montpellier and Perpignan, including Gruissan and Port Leucate, was reimagined as an alternative to the Côte d’Azur with several new-build beach towns. La Grande-Motte would be the weirdest project. It was made for fun. It’s also well positioned to visit the nearby salt marshes and 13th-century walled-in town of Aigues-Mortes, for when you want to feel as if you’ve ticked a few more holiday boxes.

From smoked kippers in Northumberland to dolphin spotting in Dorset and a palm-fringed village on a sea loch in the Scottish Highlands

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

The city’s rich history and culture have so far flown under the radar, but its fiercely proud inhabitants are determined to change that

We have hardly begun walking before I spot the side alley, curving away from the main road in a patchwork of sunlit yellow walls, shuttered windows and shadowy archways. “What’s up there?” Elena, my guide to the city, pulls a wry smile. “That is Carmine. As a kid, I was warned not to go there.”

I turn up the alley. There’s a lot of graffiti. Next to an anarchy symbol, someone has sprayed “morte al decoro” – death to decorum. I’m intrigued. We go further, finding a labyrinth of colourful streets filled with bars and restaurants, a few just opening up for the day.

Five travel writers share their favourite holidays at home, from gravel biking in Scotland and a steam train ride in Yorkshire to rowing all the way from Oxford to London

One of my best UK holidays was the week I spent in June 2013 rowing from Oxford to London with two friends, James and Tom.

Exploring prehistory sites around the Irish Sea – that were old even before the pyramids were built – throws a magical light on our ancestors

The guide was adamant. “I’ve picked human teeth out of there and I’m not doing it again.” The small group of tourists looked suitably aghast, except the boy. He was jiggling the wellington boots on his feet and singing to himself. He looked about 14. I sensed that he was the catalyst, the one to make things happen.

“So, if anyone is planning to leave human remains in this ancient place,” went on the guide, throwing the boy a stern look, “I say, DON’T.”

Your best UK breaks include an island off Mull, a rail journey along the County Antrim coast and Dorset’s best-kept secret

• Tell us about your favourite under-the-radar European city – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Mudeford feels like one of England’s best-kept secrets, the sort of place visitors from abroad might never imagine exists here. Golden sand and sparkling water give it an almost Mediterranean feel, while Hengistbury Head adds beautiful coastal walks and wide-open views. Our perfect day is simple: arrive early, wander along the headland, let the children play on the beach, then stop at one of the relaxed cafes for lunch or an ice-cream. My tip is to take the little ferry across the harbour – it turns an already lovely day out into a proper seaside adventure.
Priti Singer

The Mjølkevegen was once used to bring milk from high pastures to the towns below. Now cyclists are discovering the road’s breathtaking panoramas of peaks and lakes, dotted with cosy inns

‘Norway is a hilly country,” shrugs Glenn Roar Berge. He’s not wrong, though he is fond of an understatement. I’m in Valdres in southern Norway to explore the cycle routes that skirt the edges of Jotunheimen national park. Glenn from Jotunheimen Travel is our guide, a born-and-bred local of these mountains.

For most of our three-day ride, we’ll be following the Mjølkevegen, or Milky Way, a 155-mile (250km) route from Vinstra in the north to Gol in the south. It was developed after the second world war, when increased demand for fresh milk meant connecting the mountain farms with the towns below. While farming continues, the road has been embraced in recent years by gravel cyclists, (typically riders on drop-bar bikes favouring unpaved roads and trails), looking for a multi-day adventure far from towns and cities.

I found two days of hard graft – repairing hiking paths with a conservation trust in stunningly remote Wester Ross – a surprisingly rewarding experience

I hadn’t planned to enjoy any of this. As summer light fell on Stac Pollaidh – the summit’s teeth bared, the views stretching across the surreal emptiness of Assynt – I found myself ankle-deep in blanket bog next to a hiking path, back bent, hacking at the tough terrain with a heavy-duty mattock. Farther up the hillside, another hunched figure was cutting a deep brown scar into the moor grass and, while he worked, I stood back to look at my efforts. At my feet was a cross drain that I’d unblocked and repacked with new stonework to prevent storm damage and aid runoff from the path. A burble began to trickle, slow yet clear across the sparkling bedrock. It felt a little like appreciating a masterwork in a museum.

I’d come to Wester Ross with a bucket and spade, not for a beach break at particularly gorgeous Achmelvich or Clachtoll nearby, but with the notion of giving something back to the hills. The Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland (Oats) is a steward of many of the Highlands’ most famous mountains – developing, building and repairing paths and habitats – and I’d joined a group of volunteers for a two-day stint on the north-west Highlands’ most visited peak. Factoring in a free stay at Ullapool youth hostel and the promise of a home-cooked communal meal in return, plus an acceptable midge-free forecast, I’d driven north from Edinburgh the night before in a buoyant mood.

Forget the vampire tales – the Eastern Carpathians deliver dramatic peaks, roaming bears and deep solitude

As the sun disappears behind the high tree line, our campfire spits and crackles. Four plump trout are sizzling on a flame-heated slab of rock, a cooking technique used by people in the Gurghiu mountains, part of Transylvania’s Eastern Carpathians, for centuries. Apart from gentle birdsong, it’s the only sound up here, 1,550 metres above sea level and far from any town or village.

“This area is very wild,” says Samir Teslovan, who drove us up through the densely forested peaks from his guesthouse in Toplița. “When I come here to the mountains, I charge my battery, charge my soul. I feel free, like the wind.”

The Jura and Three Lakes region is often overlooked by visitors, but on a lake-hopping adventure I discovered its gentle beauty as well as great food and wine

The ferry cuts across the waters of Lake Biel, creating soft ripples, as if someone has taken a brushstroke to a blue canvas. To starboard, as we approach St Peter’s Island, are gentle mountains; to port side, lie golden fields. Straight ahead, the isle looks empty and Crusoe-esque.

On the jetty, Max Frey, a boatman, historian and guide, is waiting for me. He’s a man of dates and paperwork and pulls a handful from his satchel as he greets me, thrilled at the prospect of leading a tour; Switzerland’s Jura and Three Lakes region, this idyllic nook on the French border, is often overlooked by visitors.

Martine Perret’s latest aerial images reveal the land at a scale that invites both awe and urgency; ancient riverbeds that have carved the land over millenia, the immense salt flats reflecting incredible colours and a unique marine biodiversity. These images are part of an ongoing photo series from the last five years showing sweeping landscapes from the Abrolhos Islands, Gascoyne, and Wheatbelt areas

• Rare water world: Australia’s Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre from the air – in pictures

From a 500-year-old inn in the Italian Dolomites to a log cabin in Finland’s lake district, these boltholes offer a tranquil and restorative getaway

From the Alpine meadows of Bavaria to a pristine lake in Italy and the pilgrim routes of the Pyrenees, here are some of your favourite discoveries.
• Tell us about a lesser known European island – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Haldensee is a clear, sparkling cold lake located at the bottom of the Tannheimer Tal valley in the Austrian Alps (about 90 miles south-west of Munich). We visited last year, just when summer was on its way out, and it was too cold to skinny-dip in the lake (unless you were very brave). Nonetheless, if you’re a hiker, a ski lift takes you up into the Allgäu Alps where you can walk through dense forest to Bad Kissinger Hütte serving refreshing apfelschorle, warming soups and seasonal bakes to refuel for the journey downhill. When going down, we were accompanied by tinkling cattle, ambling along the mountain-side springs, which made the experience so much more memorable.
Kovida

Söderåsen national park is one of Europe’s largest protected broadleaf woods, offering wild swimming, spectacular hiking trails and an inspiring story of regeneration

From the bus window, the ridge looks like a giant slumbering beast stretched deep green across the flat farmland. “It feels alive,” I say to the woman beside me. “Yes,” she answers. “It is where you would run for safety, don’t you think?”

I am in southern Sweden to explore Söderåsen national park, established in 2001 to protect more than 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of the larger Söderåsen ridgeline. Shaped over millennia by immense geological collisions, fractures, volcanic eruptions and ice ages, today it is one of northern Europe’s largest continuous protected broadleaf forests, and only 90 minutes by car from Copenhagen or, in my case, two hours by public transport.

The regeneration of historic warehouses has transformed this former red-light district into one of the port city’s most vibrant areas

A thin peninsula just south of Rotterdam’s centre, Katendrecht was once at the heart of the world’s busiest port, home to continental Europe’s first Chinatown and a lively sailors’ quarter. Its later reputation as a red light district has been shrugged off – part of the city’s wider reinvention in the aftermath of extensive second world war bombing.

From the source to the sea, our writers share their favourite ways to immerse themselves in nature by paddleboarding, canoeing, camping, walking and fishing

It’s early afternoon on an unusually hot and sunny Yorkshire day. I’m standing on my paddleboard on the tidal section of the River Esk, near Whitby’s New Bridge, as cars stream across. The 28-mile-long Esk is special, as it is the only major river in Yorkshire that flows directly into the North Sea.

You don’t have to be a sailor to cruise the estuaries of Essex on this historic craft. The skipper will show you the ropes – or just sit back and enjoy the ride

In a darkened room in Maldon, Essex, a ship’s lantern illuminates the laundry drying on a web of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Between piles of sailing memorabilia, 86-year-old Barry Pearce is flipping through a yellowing logbook, watched by his mongrel, Winkle. It feels more like a ship’s cabin than a terrace house. Pearce is one of a handful of surviving skippers who delivered freight on the Thames by sailing barge, the flat-bottomed trading boats famous for their striking red sails that were endemic to the river’s estuary until the 1960s. He remembers the names of every vessel he worked on – Remercie, Edith May, Colonia.

In the 19th century, the ochre sails of thousands of Thames sailing barges pierced the skyline as the craft carried cargo from the Thames estuary and beyond in and out of London. Their shallow draft allowed them to snake far upriver in as little as a metre of water (bargemen would boast that they could sail anywhere there had been a heavy dew). Their ingenious rig, with sails that could be set and stowed with the help of winches, meant around 150 tonnes of cargo could be shifted by just a skipper and mate – often accompanied by a guard dog. This efficiency allowed them to outlive all other commercial sailing vessels, surviving until the 1960s, when Pearce himself took the helm.

With great beaches, culture and nature, the resort town of Palanga and the wild Curonian Spit offer an affordable – and cooler – alternative to the Med

The water off Palanga’s sandy white beach is tinged pale green – the colour of the feathery clouds of Furcellaria lumbricalis that occasionally brush against my calves. Underfoot, the Baltic seabed is ridged, the sea so clear and shallow that every ripple is visible. The water deepens very gradually – making it ideal for families. I’m quite far from the coast, but still only thigh deep, the sea still cool as I duck beneath the surface.

Elsewhere in Europe, another heatwave has prompted health warnings and school closures. But here in Lithuania, children scamper on the sand and splash in the shallows as temperatures remain, if not cool, bearable. I’ve come to explore some of the Baltic beaches – here and on the Curonian Spit – which are fast gaining popularity as the Med heats up and prices in southern Europe remain stubbornly high.

From Calais to Le Touquet, the Côte d’Opale is home to thriving fishing ports, grand old seaside resorts and restaurants serving the freshest seafood

Stellio Lestienne, chef at La Matelote in Boulogne’s harbour, shows me his shopping list as we browse the city’s daily morning fish market. He wants to pick up some crab and sole, which are in season, but his usual lobster fisher is still out on his boat, so he’ll have to wait a bit for that. Although I’ve been a regular visitor to both Boulogne and the surrounding Hauts-de-France region for about 30 years, this is my first time in the fish market. Now I’m kicking myself for all that lost time.

It’s not very big, nor is it remotely picturesque, stretching along a nondescript car park in the port. But it does have a fantastic selection of fish and seafood, both from fishers (pêcheurs artisans in light-blue stalls) and retailers (commerçants in dark blue). And it’s considerably cheaper than other fish markets I’ve seen. “People come here from the UK with cool bags to do their shopping,” Stellio says, pointing to a man doing that very thing. I spot filleted roussettes (dogfish) going for €2 each. At another stall, a man deftly slices through a grotesque-looking monkfish, cutting out the prized cheeks.

From Blackpool to Bournemouth, these quintessentially British institutions celebrate a lot more than fish and chips and amusement arcades

Perched in our glass-fronted eyrie, 300 metres out to sea, we watch a murmuration of starlings rise and fall and swoop around us. When the show is over, we turn our attention to the food. I have a bespoke vegan menu based on the best early summer ingredients: jersey royals, asparagus, strawberries. My boyfriend orders off the weekly changing à la carte: slow-cooked beef dumplings followed by butter-poached halibut.

We are at Ebb, a restaurant at the end of the pier in Worthing, West Sussex, which opened in May. Its art-deco design and fine-dining dishes are a far cry from the fish-and-chip shops and ice-cream parlours more commonly found on seaside piers. But traditionalists need not despair: downstairs at Perch on the Pier, fish and chips – as well as tofish (tofu) and chips – are always on the menu, with a knickerbocker glory to round things off in fine retro style.

For hours we hobbled back, until we were close enough for him to place me down and run for help

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We had heard there was an incredible waterfall somewhere deep in the Thai rainforest. Seeking it out almost killed me.

In 2003 I was travelling solo through south-east Asia when I met Paul, an American with an easygoing, natural warmth. We were the only two people bunking at a youth hostel somewhere in southern Thailand and got chatting one morning. When the staff told us about a beautiful waterfall not far from where we were staying, we made plans to hike there together.

Falling in love with a novel motivated these five travel writers to immerse themselves in locations from the Yukon and Kyrgyzstan to the Côte d’Azur

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express

Rabat is a gorgeous seaside city with great food and culture, but for book lovers there’s an added incentive to go this year

The first book I read willingly was Bridget Jones’s Diary. I was 19. Up to that point, I hadn’t been much of a reader. I’d been more into football, or Baywatch, or Robin Budd in the year above – anything really. Given the choice between reading a book and staring at a wall, I would have plumped for the latter.

After finishing my A-levels, I worked in a barbecue restaurant in Portsmouth – which is where I found Bridget Jones. The book was lying around in the staffroom. I picked it up and read a few pages, and then a few more, and then a few more. It felt exciting. Like I’d met someone. Like I was suddenly in a relationship. Over the next few days, I remember cancelling nights out so I could go to bed and read. My mum thought I was depressed.

Small boats and kayaks connect the sparse communities and flourishing wildlife living on the thousands of islets on the Baltic coast

At 5am on Arkösund bay, it is so light it could be midday. I slip out of the pretty clapboard Arkösunds hotell, opened in 1895, as a small boat putters into the Baltic Sea, the sun sparkling on its calm waters. A wooden boardwalk invites me on to a string of tiny islets as geese arrow overhead and a mother swan coaxes her fluffy cygnets into a nook under a bridge.

I’m on Sweden’s east coast to explore the Östergötland archipelago, a sprawl of about 9,000 islands scattered across the Baltic Sea a few hours south of Stockholm. Quieter and less crowded than the better-known isles off Stockholm or Gothenburg, it covers several pockets of coastline and smaller archipelagos: Arkösund, Sankt Anna, Gryt and Tjust. The larger islands are flecked with traditional red timber summer houses, and are home to seals, sea birds, and dense, verdant forests of alder, cedar, oak and pine.

This overlooked quarter swaps the grandeur of tourist-saturated central Rome for murals, graffiti, cheap eateries and a working-class rhythm

One of Europe’s hotspots, central Rome has increasingly come to resemble a tube station during rush hour: stifling, overpacked and claustrophobia-inducing. Last year, the Eternal City welcomed a record number of tourists, driven in part by the 2025 Vatican Jubilee - 22.9 million arrivals stayed in the city, almost 10 times the number of residents.

Ebikes with child seats – plus idyllic campsites and pit stops en route – turn a five-day ride on the car-free Véloscénic into a wonderful family holiday

“Are you mad?” says a fellow guest over dinner at our campsite. “I heard you’re here on a long-distance cycle ride with your toddlers.”

I am in Orne, a region in Normandy, with my sister Issy and our three-year-old sons, Sid and Ralph. The landscape folds around us in green-over-green – hedgerow, oak, mossy manor wall – then opens into meadows where Percheron horses graze, knee-deep in wildflowers. Deer leap from the bocage. Cidre and poiré have been pressed here since the middle ages. The villages are sandy stone, blue- and green-shuttered; roses against the boulangerie.

Horchata, the revered creamy drink made from tiger nuts, is still served in grand Valencian parlours – always accompanied by sugar-glazed pastries

It was a glimpse of an old couple sharing a tender moment in the bustling horchatería that drew me into one of Valencia’s most storied culinary traditions. As he sipped his milky horchata de chufa and a white crescent moon appeared on his coiffed moustache, they shared a soft laugh and she dabbed it away from his upper lip.

“There’s no fixed time to drink horchata,” the lady said. “As long we have at least one every day.”

I was just 10 at the time but my siblings and I will never forget the sense of safety, comfort and warmth they offered

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We were doing the groceries when a blood vessel burst in my mother’s brain. I was 10 years old and on a family holiday to France that very suddenly changed its tenor. In the following weeks Mum went through brain surgery, suffered a stroke and was placed in intensive care.

We had been staying in a gîte but moved to a small hotel closer to the hospital. It was a terrifying and stressful time, even as a young kid who knew things were serious – but didn’t understand quite how serious.

Sagre – the historic local events that pop up in villages across the country in summer – are the perfect way to get a taste of regional cuisine and culture

I cannot remember a summer when at least one evening hasn’t been spent following signs to a local sagra. Not quite a food market and not quite a village fete, a sagra is like a village moving its kitchen outdoors for a few nights.

When I think back to those nights from childhood, the first image that comes to mind is of a woman’s hand closed into a fist above a pan of hot oil. Through a tight circle formed between her thumb and forefinger, she would squeeze soft lumps of batter, one small ball at a time, into the oil. In a few seconds, each soft mass would become a pittula, a small Salento fritter: swollen, uneven, golden, too hot to eat straight away but too good to wait for.

On a coastline brimming with seafood shacks, crab sandwiches and hyperlocal flavour, our food writer is happy to be distracted from the stunning scenery

If we take it as read that the better the view, the worse the cooking, then by rights south Wales’s Gower peninsula should be a culinary desert. The first time I visited almost 15 years ago, I was unprepared for its loveliness – back in 1956, Gower (never the Gower, as locals were quick to correct me) was the first place in the UK to be designated an area of outstanding natural beauty, and though the peninsula abuts the country’s second city, Swansea, it still feels profoundly rural. Crisscrossed by narrow lanes flanked by towering hedges and ancient churches, it’s a great place to cycle, to drive, and above all to walk up an appetite.

Indeed, it’s been a long-held ambition of mine to hike the 43 miles of the Welsh Coast Path from Mumbles to Loughor. Sadly, it remains just that because on this latest trip I spent considerably more time chomping than yomping … though in fairness I was on a research mission for a walking trip with a friend here later in the summer, because as a food writer and semi-professional glutton, I never like to head anywhere unprepared.

From the Tiramisù World Cup in Italy to street food ‘battles’ in Newcastle, your culinary highlights range from the sublime to the delicious
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The town of Menton on the French Riviera is beautiful at any time of the year but becomes even more of a treat during the annual Lemon festival (Fête du Citron, 10-28 February 2027). Its microclimate, courtesy of the Alps to the north blocking colder winds, gives Menton lemons a distinct fragrance, flavour and quality that set them apart. For me, the event transformed a damp cold UK winter into a fortnight of colour, taste and light. There were food tastings, salads made with lemons, tarts, cakes and pies all full of zesty colour and flavour at stalls and markets in the town. There are sculptures made from citrus fruit, parades and exhibitions in the Golden Garden of Light (Jardins Biovès). More than a food festival, it’s a celebration of what nature can give to the world.
April

‘Legends cling like barnacles to these shores,’ says our local writer, who reveals how the lore of these craggy cliffs and beaches resonates with the Homeric classic

The incoming tide has made a labyrinth of the beach. As silvery rivulets spread across Culbin Sands to meet the mudflats, my walk becomes increasingly circuitous: weaving inland towards the pine forest, backtracking closer to the waves, skirting tidal pools and scaling dunes constantly resculpted by the North Sea breeze.

In this shapeshifting stretch of north-east Scotland’s Moray coast, there’s not another soul in sight, nothing to anchor me to the modern day. It’s easy, then, to imagine a longship bringing weary warriors ashore, or a band of man-eating giants marauding from the woodland. Which is exactly what happens here – on screen – in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey.

A walking holiday with a group of strangers to the highest range in the Carpathians promises adventure, stunning views and camaraderie

We are giddy as we reach the summit, breathless with exertion and a guileless, childlike joy. In every direction the jagged peaks of Slovakia’s High Tatras stretch out into the distance, nubs on a colossal spine, glittering lakes embedded like shards of glass far below the rocky, ice-streaked slopes. An eagle wheels above. Somewhere on the lunar landscape a marmot squeaks. Easy laughs ricochet around the group, photos are snapped, backs thumped, words of encouragement offered to the more vertigo-inclined.

The summit of Slovakia’s Kôprovský štít had been playing a Kafkaesque game of mountain mirage with us for several hours, always just over the next ridge which, once conquered, revealed a string of further, seemingly endless ridges. Eight hours and about 23km after we had set off on our hike through the Vysoké Tatry mountain range, an eddy of smiles rippled from person to person (some, granted, of the more clenched-teeth variety). “Yes, team! We did it!” Roman, our high-spirited Slovakian mountain guide, stood atop the tip, clasping each of our hands in congratulation as we crested the peak.

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too

‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.”

We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story.

After exploring the cathedral city, I battled the heatwave while walking to the Kent coast on the Via Francigena

Canterbury for Evensong. Is there a more delightful cluster of syllables in the English language? Old English, I should say, as æfensang comes from that tongue, an update on the Latin-derived “vespers”. But whatever you call the service, Canterbury Cathedral does it in style. How beautiful the singing from the choristers in their white and purple. How beautiful the light as it honeys the stone of the quire. I had been in the city only an hour or so, and considered this early evening worship a sort of overture for my stay.

What a relief to get inside the great stone building. The lovely old city was horrible with heat. A statue of Chaucer on High Street appeared overdressed in robe, cloak and hat. He held out a page inscribed with the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales: “When in April the sweet showers fall … Then people long to go on pilgrimages.” The bronze had been hot to the touch and I began to suspect that I’d made a mistake starting my own pilgrimage at midsummer.

With bus fares capped at £3 and free for kids in August, it’s the ideal time for wildlife watching, woodland walks, world-class art and more

Trips to waterfalls, gardens, galleries, medieval forests and prehistoric caves will make the long school holidays a lot more fun. To help families explore affordably, throughout August buses in England will be free for kids and adult fares will be capped at £3 single. Or, if you arrive somewhere by train, you could buy a PlusBus ticket, which include unlimited local bus travel. Here are six ideas for family outings by bus around England.